"The predictive role of cross-language phonetic similarity measures in second language speech learning"

"It is widely acknowledged that second language speech (L2) acquisition is a challenge to adult learners. Certain non-native speech sounds that do not exist or are not phonologically distinctive in the native language (L1) tend to be more difficult to perceptually differentiate and to produce accurately than others even after years of experience with the L2. Adult L2 learners are therefore frequently characterized as having not only foreign accent but also “accented” perception (Strange, 1995). Theoretical models of L2 speech acquisition (e.g., Best & Tyler, 2007; Flege, 1995) hypothesize that degree of perceived phonetic similarity between the L1 and L2 phonological systems predicts the relative ease/difficulty in L2 speech learning. This presentation examines the use of L1/L2 acoustic comparisons and perceptual similarity paradigms to predict relative ease/difficulty in L2 speech perception and production through an overview of studies, whose target language pairings include European Portuguese as either the target language or the L1. The talk concludes with a discussion of the benefits and challenges of using these methods to predict ease/difficulty in L2 speech learning."

2019, May 16th -Violeta Martínez-Paricio (Universitat de València)

"New developments in metrical phonology: beyond bisyllabic feet"

"In Prosodic Hierarchy Theory and standard Metrical Theory, an intermediate abstract prosodic category is generally assumed between the syllable and the prosodic word, the metrical foot. This rhythmic category facilitates a unified account of the distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables across languages as well as a wide range of puzzling segmental and morphophonological cross-linguistic phenomena.

Feet have been generally assumed to be maximally bisyllabic. In this talk I will argue that in some languages feet can be maximally trisyllabic, as long as they display an internal binary structure. I will present different phonological and morphphonological data from several unrelated languages and show that metrical analyses using these layered feet allow for a simpler account of these data. Finally, I will raise some of the questions under investigation during my stay at the Phonetics & Phonology Lab, in particular, whether reference to the foot can be useful in phonological analyses of Portuguese varieties, in which other prosodic categories such as the prosodic word seem to be more relevant in their phonology."

2019, April 3rd -Andrew Nevins (UFRJ)

Cancelled

"When linearity prevails over hierarchy in syntax"

"Hierarchical structure has been cherished as a grammatical universal. We use experimental methods to show where linear order is also a relevant syntactic relation. An identical methodology and design were used across six research sites on South Slavic languages. Experimental results show that in certain configurations, grammatical production can in fact favor linear order over hierarchical structure. However, these findings are limited to coordinate structures and distinct from the kind of production errors found with comparable configurations such as “attraction” errors. The results demonstrate that agreement morphology may be computed in a series of steps, one of which is partly independent from syntactic hierarchy."

2019, March 26th -Alda Mari (CNRS)

"Non-hintikkean semantics for belief and its extensions"

"Italian (and Portuguese) are well-known exceptions to the cross-linguistic generalization according to which belief predicates are indicative selectors across languages. We newly propose that languages that select the subjunctive with non-factive epistemic predicates allow us to see a systematic polysemy between what we call an expressive/solipsistic- ‘belief’ (featuring only a doxastic dimension) and an inquisitive/suppositional-‘belief’ (featuring both a doxastic and an epistemic dimension conveying doxastic certainty (in the assertion) and epistemic uncertainty (in the presupposition)). We argue that this distinction is not an idiosyncrasy of non-factive epistemics. Fine-tuning the descriptions for a variety of predicates we pave the way for a new typology of attitudes relying on this systematic polysemy."

2018, November 23rd - Barbara Hans-Bianchi(Department of Human Studies, University of L’Aquila)

"Pennsylvania Deits(c)h: Spelling a group identity"

"Pennsylvania Dutch (PD), or Pennsylvania German, is a minority language stemming from several Middle German and High German dialects spoken by the German immigrants in Pennsylvania during the 17thand 18thcenturies. Today, it is used by some 200-300.000 people in different US States and in Canada. Most of these speakers are members of sectarian communities like Old Order Mennonites and Amish. The very survival of this language after over 3 centuries from the first German settlement in 1683 is surprising, if one considers that immigrants mostly switch to the majority language in the lapse of 3 generations (for an extensive description of the language and its history, see Louden 2016). In my presentation, I would like to focus on the manifold ways of spelling PD as a key element in the emergence and constitution of a group identity. While the linkage between language and identity is indisputable, the awareness that writing and spelling play an important role in the constitution and representation of a group identity has grown in recent years (see e.g. Street 1984, Sebba 2011, Jaffe et al. 2012, Hans-Bianchi 2014). By looking at different spelling practices in various periods and considering the public discussion about the best spelling rules for PD through its history, I wish to investigate what kind of implicit and explicit considerations and attitudes lie behind different spelling patterns and how these relate to the group’s identity; the way of spelling –by highlighting similarities and dissimilarities with other varieties in the repertoire – gives visual expression to the relationships between the languages and the groups participating in the same complex multilingual scenario (Hans-Bianchi 2016a, 2016b)."

"Binding in four agreement steps: A syntactic derivation of anaphoric dependencies in Spanish and European Portuguese"

"In this talk I will present a minimalist, agreement-based analysis that aims to account for the interpretation of reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns in Peninsular Spanish (PSp) and European Portuguese (EP), languages with clitic doubling of reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns. Structural (c-command, locality and complementary distribution) and interpretative diagnostics (VP-ellipsis, only-contexts), clearly show that the interpretation of the clitic and its double is determined syn­tactically: it is de­termined locally, dependent on c-command, and unambiguously bound for reflexives and free for non-reflexive clitics. The analysis in the second part of the talk aims to derive the syntax and interpretation of the clitic and its double by means of the following four agreement steps: Step I: agreement between the clitic and its double. This is motivated by the fact that the clitic determines the interpretation of the reflexive and the non-reflexive double. Step II: clitization as agreement and incorporation (cf. Roberts 2009), which follows from a unified analysis of object clitics and reflexive clitics. I will take reflexive predicates in EP and PSp to be syntactically transitive (against Kayne 1988, Sportiche 1990/1998, Alboiu et al. 2004, Reinhart and Siloni 2004, 2005 and in favor of Rizzi 1986 and Marelj & Reuland 2016) for the following rea­sons: Reflexive predicates do not pattern with unaccusative verbs wrt. (i) auxiliary selection, (ii) past participle agreement, (iii) availability of postverbal bare subjects and with unergative verbs wrt. clitic placement in faire-causatives. Furthermore, the double is not an adjunct, as assumed e.g. by Alboiu et al. (2004), but an argument, due to (i) the availability of clitic doubling in ECM constructions and (ii) ellipsis tests. Finally the clitic is not a pure case absorber, because reflexive predicates are distinct from antipassive predicates. Step III: agreement between the subject/external argument and the clitic-verb complex in the line of Kratzer (2009), following from the fact that the binding domain of clitics is essentially the domain in which the clitic meets the subject/external argument. Step IV: agreement between the double and the intensifier, i.e. próprio (EP) and mismo (PSp), respectively."

"Executive Functions and Prosodic Abilities in Children with High-Functioning Autism"

"Little is known about the relationship between prosodic abilities and executive function skills. As deficits in executive functions (EFs) and prosodic impairments are characteristics of autism, we examined how EFs are related to prosodic performance in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen children with HFA (M = 7.4 years; SD = 1.12) matched to 15 typically developing peers on age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence participated in the study. The Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C; Peppé & McCann, 2003) adapted to European Portuguese (Filipe et al., 2017) was used to assess prosodic performance. The PEPS-C includes tasks at two levels: formal and functional. The formal level assesses auditory discrimination and production abilities (related to perceptual and motor skills) required to perform the tasks. The functional level takes into account four prosodic functions (related to cognitive understanding and expression): affect, modality, chunking, and focus. The European Portuguese version of the PEPS-C provides typical data for ages between 5 and 20 (N = 131) that are useful for comparison with the performance of atypical populations. The Children’s Color Trails Test (CCTT-1, CCTT-2, and CCTT Interference Index; Llorente et al., 2003) was used as an indicator of executive control abilities. Our findings suggest no relation between prosodic abilities and visual search and processing speed (assessed by CCTT-1), but a significant link between prosodic skills and divided attention, working memory/sequencing, set-switching, and inhibition (assessed by CCTT-2 and CCTT Interference Index). These findings may be of clinical relevance since difficulties in EFs and prosodic deficits are characteristic of many neurodevelopmental disorders. Future studies are needed to further investigate the nature of the relationship between impaired prosody and executive (dys)function."

"Adaptation in Pronoun Resolution: Evidence from Brazilian and European Portuguese"

"Previous research accounting for pronoun resolution as a problem of probabilistic inference has not explored the phenomenon of adaptation, whereby the processor constantly tracks and adapts, rationally, to changes in a statistical environment. We investigate whether Brazilian (BP) and European Portuguese (EP) speakers adapt to variations in the probability of occurrence of ambiguous overt and null pronouns, in two experiments assessing resolution towards subject and object referents. For each variety (BP, EP), participants were faced with either the same number of null and overt pronouns (equal distribution), or with an environment with fewer overt (than null) pronouns (unequal distribution). We find that the preference for interpreting overt pronouns as referring back to an object referent (object-biased interpretation) is higher when there are fewer overt pronouns (i.e., in the unequal, relative to the equal distribution condition). This is especially the case for BP, a variety with higher prior frequency and smaller object-biased interpretation of overt pronouns, suggesting that participants adapted incrementally and integrated prior statistical knowledge with the knowledge obtained in the experiment. We hypothesize that comprehenders adapted rationally, with the goal of maintaining, across variations in pronoun probability, the likelihood of subject and object referents. Our findings unify insights from research in pronoun resolution and in adaptation, and add to previous studies in both topics: They provide evidence for the influence of pronoun probability in pronoun resolution, and for an adaptation process whereby the language processor not only tracks statistical information, but uses it to make interpretational inferences."

2018, March 14th - Hugo Cardoso (CLUL) and Maesh Radhakrishnan (CLUL)

"Documenting Sri Lanka Portuguese in speech and song"

"Sri Lanka Portuguese is a Portuguese-based creole language currently spoken mostly in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, by the community identified as Portuguese Burghers. This talk reports on an ongoing documentation project, which is building a large annotated corpus of this vulnerable language as well as of Burgher music, song and dance. In this talk, we will introduce the project, its objectives and results, exploring in particular the diverse settings in which linguistic samples have been and will be collected - including interviews, conversations, demonstrations, as well as songs. Some musicolinguistic analyses of song performances will also be presented."

2018, February 23rd - James Pustejovsky (Brandeis University)

"Verb Meaning and Co-compositionality: Means, Manner, and Result"

"How do we define the meaning of a verb? Current linguistic theories use terms such as manner, means, and result, to help assign verbs to immutable classes with distinct behaviors. In this talk, I discuss those factors involved in identifying the semantics classes of verbs. I argue that there is no strict manner/result complementarity in the sense of Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005, 2010). Nor are there verb classes in the sense of Levin (1993). Rather, there are two factors involved in constructing the meaning of a predicate: the underlying dynamics of event structure, as developed recently within Generative Lexicon; and the interaction between event participants, as facilitated through co-composition. The resulting model is closer to Croft's (2012) notion of a causal analysis of verb meaning than that proposed by Levin and Rappaport Hovav, while also providing a formal interpretation of verbal polysemy in terms of co-compositionality."

"Measuring linguistic complexity is useful for multiple purposes (e.g. assessing L1 and L2 development; evaluating or building written and oral material targeting specific audiences). While the topic has long attracted the attention of scholars, most languages still lack tools for calculating linguistic complexity, and in general phonological units and patterns are little explored. In this talk, we report on recent work proposing and motivating a number of phonologically- and statistically-based measures for linguistic complexity assessment, and apply these measures to samples of oral and written material with expected differences in complexity/cost, in order to determine the potential of these indicators to distinguish texts in terms of degree of complexity/cost. Besides directly reflecting phonological complexity/cost, some of the proposed measures also reflect complexity in other areas of grammar (morphology, syntax and semantics). The method is applied to European Portuguese (EP), but is extendable to other languages as well. The measures investigated take into consideration inherent properties of phonological units or patterns and/or their frequency in the language. It is assumed that less common units or patterns contribute to higher levels of difficulty/cost. Almost all measures proposed showed statistical differences among three groups of texts. The results indicate that simple and automatically obtained measures coming from the distribution of phonological units and patterns are able to distinguish texts of variable complexity in the expected direction."

In this talk, we examine three different types of hiatus resolution phenomena (Vowel Merger, Semivocalization and Back Vowel deletion) in eight different regions, in the North, Centre, South of Portugal and in Azores and Madeira. All regions discussed present several similarities with the standard variety of European Portuguese. We observed that all phenomena analysed are constrained by lexical stress. For Vowel Merger, when either of the vowels is stressed the phenomenon is blocked, unlike in the case of Semivocalization and Back Vowel deletion, where hiatus resolution applies if the second vowel is stressed. Besides lexical stress, we also observed that all phenomena are constrained by prosodic structure, namely they are bound by the Intonational Phrase. Also, differences across regions were found. In the North and Madeira there is a preference for Semivocalization, whereas in the South and Azores Back Vowel deletion is preferred. Furthermore, all these phenomena are constrained by additional prosodic conditions, such as the level of prominence level, as well as stress clash.

2016, June 15th - Deniz Zeyrek (METU/CLUL)

"Discourse - A challenging domain of research and the case of Turkish Discourse Bank"

In its widest sense, discourse is the level above the sentence in the spoken or the written modality, where somemone identifies himself as the speaker or the writer and has the intention of convincing the hearer or the reader. It has various forms ranging from daily conversations to elaborate oration and it covers all genres (Benveniste 1971). Due to its wide scope, different researchers have tackled discourse from a variety of perspectives. In this talk, I will deal with some of the issues surrounding discourse phenomena relevant to my ongoing work on discourse mechanisms. I will particularly concentrate on discourse relations (alternatively known as rhetorical relations) and how discourse is organized around discourse relations. Looking at the interaction of discourse relations, I will argue that discourse is structured, though in a much simpler way than sentences are. I will limit myself to written discourse and our experiences with Turkish Discourse Bank, which is a balanced resource of texts written in modern Turkish (400.000-words) containing annotations of discourse relations signalled by connectives (equivalents of but, and, however, etc.). Reference: Benveniste, Émile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics. Coral Gables, Fa: University of Miami Press. (Translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek).

2016, May 3rd - Ian Smith (University of York)

"Dutch Influence in Sri Lanka Portuguese"

After ousting the Portuguese from Sri Lanka in 1658, the Dutch married into the established creole community and adopted Sri Lanka Portuguese as their home language, while Dutch was maintained as the language of administration and of the Dutch Church. In traditional historical linguistics terms, Dutch was both a substrate and adstrate of Sri Lanka Portuguese. Substantial Dutch lexical influence on Sri Lanka Portuguese has been recently documented (Avram 2013). This paper looks at two cases of Dutch morphosyntactic influence: inversion in interrogatives and the passive formation. Both of these structures were found in 16th C Portuguese but probably not used in early Sri Lanka Portuguese given their rarity in other creoles (Michaelis et al 2013). Both structures would have been re-introduced to the language during the course of its development. Evidence will be presented to show that Dutch served as a model for the reconstitution of both structures. Reference: Avram, Andrei A. 2013. The Dutch lexical contribution to three Asian Portuguese Creoles. Papia 23(1): 51-74.

In this talk, we observe the role of intonation and visual cues in the perception of statements and questions in two varieties of European Portuguese – the standard (SEP) and the insular variety of Azores (PtD) –, previously shown to convey sentence type contrasts by different uses of intonational means and/or facial gestures, namely eyebrow movements. Forty native speakers (twenty from each variety) were exposed to SEP and PtD stimuli in a perception task with three conditions (audio only, video only and audiovisual). The audiovisual condition includes congruent and incongruent (both natural and manipulated) stimuli. We concluded that both SEP and PtD participants rely more on intonation than on eyebrow movement to identify sentence types, even when exposed to incongruent audiovisual stimuli. In the absence of audio information, unexpectedly, participants do not interpret eyebrow raising as a question marker, not even when perceiving stimuli from their native variety. When exposed to non-native audiovisual stimuli, both SEP and PtD participants present longer reaction times (RTs), especially for incongruent stimuli. Finally, although we confirm the strength of intonation over visual cues, RTs in the audiovisual condition are significantly lower than in the audio condition, thus pointing to the relevance of visual cues for structural/linguistic marking.

Approximating semantic relatedness is an important part of various text and knowledge processing tasks of crucial importance in the ever growing domain of biomedical informatics. The problem of most state-of-the-art methods for calculating semantic relatedness is their dependence on highly detailed, structured knowledge resources, which makes these methods poorly adaptable for many usage scenarios. Ideally, the problem could be solved by harnessing the knowledge from the scientific literature, which is why the distributional corpus-based measures seem to be an appealing option. In this presentation we will try to review some of the corpus-based approaches which provide the most promising results.

2016, March 1st - Paula Fikkert (Radboud University Nijmegen)

"Universal constraints on speech perception and production? Insights from early phonological acquisition"

Children learn to recognize words fast and reliably despite noise and variation in the input. They do this by extracting relevant phonetic features from the input and matching these onto phonological representations of words stored in the mind. How they learn to do this? Over the last four decades we have learned that infants are amazingly good at phonetic learning. However, our understanding of what happens when children construct their mental lexicon, which requires phonological learning, is as yet poor. Phonological learning involves the construction of invariant phonological representations of words that are both abstract enough to allow fast recognition and handle phonetic, phonological and morphological variation automatically, and detailed enough to keep lexical items distinct. Moreover, these same phonological representations are used to initiate articulation for production. In this talk I will argue that a comprehensive theory of phonological acquisition should take both perception and production into account, as well as learning and development. I will present a large set of production and perception data addressing the nature of place and manner of articulation as well as laryngeal features. For each set of features asymmetries in children's perception and production are attested. However, the asymmetries do not allow for one straightforward explanation, and are motivated differently for each set. I will discuss the consequences for a model of phonological acquisition. Most data will come from Dutch, but data from other languages, including German, English and Japanese, will be presented as well.